Sea Lion Shores living single thought by single thought.

XD! Neither is Szymon; he’s self conscious about his stutter.

Szymon remained patently unfazed as the familiar-unfamiliar wolf regarded him with a somewhat disgruntled expression, his body tensed with a warrior’s readiness before it relaxed into some semblance of calm. The youngest Cairn did not turn his eyes to the sea lions — he had seen them before, and unless he was hunting, they held no interest for him — and kept his sulphureous eyes fastened on Tetsubō, taking in the flicker of hackles that lit in steel-blue and sterling along his spine, the irritated flick of his pallid tail. Had he truly been surprised? Szymon had been moving openly, with pride written in the normally furtive movement of his body; and he had not meant to startle the potential ally and packmate. Too, he reeked of fresh blood if the visual and verbal cues had not been warning enough of his approach. Still, if Tetsubō wished him to go, he would. Szymon, like his silent counterpart, was not interested in conversation — and he would not beg for companionship when he was notoriously bad at social interaction in the first place.

Fanning one tattered ear out to the side with eloquent insouciance, Szymon turned his head in a continuation of that motion and gazed out toward the Sea — She could always hold his interest, no matter how many times he had seen Her before — and rolled one angular shoulder in a shrug as he turned back toward the pack territory. The shark would make a good gift for Skellige, who was guided by the most fearsome spirit of all, and there were borders to mark and caches to dig still. He moved off at what appeared to be an awkward sideways clip, but it was comfortable to Szymon, who had been raised on such fickle, shifting terrain — it was partially because it was more comfortable to carry the unwieldy catch this way, and a great deal owed to the instinct not to turn his back fully on a wolf that he did not yet know or trust. It did not pay to underestimate one’s allies or adversaries — but in Szymon’s case, it often worked to his advantage.